No Seed, No Harvest

One of my friends this week disclosed to me how he for a long time attended a church that taught the prosperity gospel. For those of you who haven’t come across it, the prosperity gospel is a doctrine preached in some churches whose basic belief is that God wants to bless His people financially, and the way to access that blessing is through giving to the church. Every week, he heard testimonies at the church about people who gave and their small businesses became huge, or their investments doubled. My friend desperately wanted to be financially blessed too, especially since at the time he had no job, no income and no savings whatsoever! This gospel sounded like a good plan; all he needed to do was give and it would come back with interest! So even though he lived on handouts, he found ways to spend very little on transport and often went without lunch so that he could give to his church. Four years later, he was not only still broke but also very frustrated! He began wondering what he could possibly doing wrong and why others were being blessed and not him.

Maybe you identify with my friend; you have been a faithful giver and wondered why God hadn’t come through for you. Or perhaps you’re the more realistic type who gives without expecting anything back in return. Or, maybe for you, giving is an inconvenience, something you do when you feel you have to or when you have extra to give. Or perhaps you’ve seen through the whole thing and you feel sympathetic for all those soft minded, gullible people who’ve been taken in by smooth talking preachers!

Which of these views is correct? 

The third foundational money principle in the bible that’s very often misunderstood… ‘No Seed, No Harvest’.

Read Mal.3:10-11 ‘Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the LORD Almighty’.

Chances are that you’ve heard about tithing and maybe you’re even currently practicing it. A tithe means ‘a tenth part’ and tithing is giving 10% of any increase in wealth that comes your way to God. It is a practice that was commanded and regularly practiced in the Old Testament. According to Malachi, God promisedIsrael2 things toIsraelwhen they tithed faithfully;

• Acceleration – God promised Israel that when they tithed, He in turn would ‘throw open the floodgates of heaven’ and pour out more blessing than they could store. What does ‘floodgates of heaven’ mean? Deut.28:12a says ‘The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands’ God’s promise was not to give the Israelites money when they tithed but to send rain on their crops! In other words, He would bless the places where they had invested.
• Protection – v.11 reads ‘I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the LORD Almighty’ God promised that when they tithed, He would prevent pests from devouring their crops. In the KJV, he says ‘I will rebuke the devourer on your behalf’. After the farmer had labored hard to plant crops and looked after them, the devourer was the pest that would come afterwards to destroy the fruits of his labor. WhenIsrael declared dependence on God through their tithe, then God would put their crops under his protection so their work would not be in vain.

There are some who argue that the tithe was an Old Testament regulation and that with the coming of Jesus, we live in an era of grace instead. But Jesus was clear in Matt 5:17 that he did not come to abolish the law, he came to fulfill it. In fact the NT doesn’t talk about tithe but about giving sacrificially, as an act of worship, in response for what God has done for us. It certainly doesn’t stipulate a certain %. But as on old preacher once said, ‘if an Old Testament saint could give 10% of his increase under the bondage of the law, how much more should a child of God give knowing his sins are redeemed under grace!” As people who have been saved by grace, we have a lot more to be grateful to God for than they did back then.

When we tithe, we are declaring that our Provider is God, not money. When God opens the floodgates of heaven, God provides my investments with acceleration beyond expectation. This is the ‘X factor’ that helps you excel beyond your human capability. Similarly, our tithe protects us from the devourer who comes to eat into our investments.

Remember however, tithing doesn’t make us rich; it only connects us with acceleration and protection over our already existing investments! The promise is not that God will bless you with money, but that He will bless what you are already doing.

Some people ask whether saving & investing displays a lack of faith. After all, didn’t God say if we seek His kingdom that all other things will be added to us? But Prov. 6:6-8 says ‘Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.’ We must be careful not to disguise laziness with faith! Proverbs 13:11 says ‘… he who gathers money little by little makes it grow’. I believe that the biggest difference between wealthy people and poor people is that poor people eat their seed now whereas wealthy people sow or invest their seed. No Seed, No Harvest.

For many of us, a job is one of the main sources of the seeds from which wealth is propagated…. The work of a job is not to make you wealthy – it only provides the seeds for growing and multiplying wealth. It is what you do with the salary you earn from your job that determines if you will grow wealthy or remain poor! We live in a society where image is everything. Therefore, many have achieved the image at the expense of their seed. So we have people, even here at Mavuno, who look rich but in actual fact are poor. The wealthy instead focus on investing their seed and then live off what remains. Remember, ‘No Seed, No Harvest’.

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